But she explained nothing more.  And she left Dion wondering just how she would receive a sorrow such as had overtaken Mr. Thrush.  Would she be able to submit as those calm and simple figures on the tombs which she loved appeared to be submitting?  Would she let what she loved pass away into the shades with a brave and noble, “Farewell”?  Would she take the hand of Sorrow, that hand of steel and ice, as one takes the hand of a friend—­stern, terrible, unfathomed, never to be fathomed in this world, but a friend?  He wondered, but, loving her with that love which never ceased to grow within him, he prayed that he might never know.  She seemed born to shed happiness and to be happy, and indeed he could scarcely imagine her wretched.

It was after the explanation of Mr. Thrush’s exact relation to Rosamund that the silent contest began in the waning summer when London was rather arid, and even the Thames looked hot between its sluggish banks of mud.

After the trial of her divorce case was over, Mrs. Clarke had left London and gone into the country for a little while, to rest in a small house possessed by Esme Darlington at Hook Green, a fashionable part of Surrey.  At, and round about, Hook Green various well-known persons played occasionally at being rural; it suited Mrs. Clarke very well to stay for a time among them under Mr. Darlington’s ample and eminently respectable wing.  She hated being careful, but even she, admonished by Mr. Darlington, realized that immediately after emerging from the shadow of a great scandal she had better play propriety for a time.  It really must be “playing,” for, as had been proved at the trial, she was a thoroughly proper person who hadn’t troubled to play hitherto.  So she rested at Hook Green, till the season was over, with Miss Bainbridge, an old cousin of Esme’s; and Esme “ran down” for Saturdays and Sundays, and “ran up” from Mondays to Saturdays, thus seeing something of the season and also doing his chivalrous devoir by “poor dear Cynthia who had had such a cruel time of it.”

The season died, and Mr. Darlington then settled down for a while at Pinkney’s Place, as his house was called, and persuaded Mrs. Clarke to lengthen her stay there till the end of August.  He would invite a few of the people likely to “be of use” to her under the present circumstances, and by September things would be “dying down a little,” with all the shooting parties of the autumn beginning, and memories of the past season growing a bit gray and moldy.  Then Mrs. Clarke could do what she liked “within reason, of course, and provided she gave Constantinople a wide berth.”  This she had not promised to do, but she seldom made promises.